Sparkle has announced yet another card in its Calibre series. This time it's mainstream 8500GT with 512MB of GDDR3 memory.
New Calibre P850+ is based on G86 core that works at 650MHz, which is 200MHz over the reference clock. Unlike the reference Nvidia 8500GT which is equipped with 400MHz 256MB of slower GDDR2, new mainstream Calibre comes with 512MB of GDDR3 memory that works at 1440MHz. Even shaders got a boost from reference 900MHz to stunning 1300MHz, thats even higher then reference 8600GT (1180MHz). Card has a 128-bit memory interface and 16 Stream Processors.
As from recently, entire Calibre series comes with so called "daughter card", a small PCB that shows a real-time GPU and PCB temperature. Another Calibre add-on is a VRT (VGA Rectifier Technology), which is a iron bar placed on top side to enhance PCB and VGA card shape. Card is also SLI ready, and supports DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0. Card deserve a "Mainstream Gamers" label since it will easily beat most of the reference 8600GT cards.
